Archive for November 2011

Back “home” in DC we wanted a quick and easy meal and so headed out to Reston to this reliable place. I reviewed Coastal Flats last year, another member of the same small chain.

This is one of those well done (but not earth-shattering) mall places. It seems that good malls these days aren’t going with the giant chains or with one-off restaurants. they must feel the need for a little more stability in their business relationships.

The menu.

They have these donut-like rolls which are pretty delicious.

This was billed as an “perfect margarita” and actually, it was pretty good. Not quite as good as my own, but not bad at all.

I’m very busy right now with different stages of both my novels. I’m line editing Untimed and trying to get my first, The Darkening Dream, ready for publication. One of the more fun parts of this is the art design. The book has seven points of view and each chapter is written from one perspectives. To help subliminally differentiate them, I thought it would be cool to commission chapter heading engravings specific to each character.

The book is set in 1913 and packed with occult workings based on extensive research into real religious, pseudo-religious, and just plain magical belief systems. By real, I mean that people before 1913 believed and wrote about them. But in the book, they’re really real. This is a world consistant with ours, but where the creepy sordid and supernatural crawls just beneath the surface. And truth is stranger than fiction.

Given that the images needed to be black and white, I thought a style reminiscent of classical occult engravings of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries would be perfect. Iconography of demons, witches, and magic from creators who actually believed in them!

Below are historical engravings I dug up (google for the win!). I provided them to my artist to illustrate the mood and style I wanted for my original pieces.

The above examples are for STYLE, not for content. I like to think of these as reflecting the “occult engraving” style I want to emulate. They are engraved with a naive sensibility, hatched shading, awkward proportions, and western occult symbolic motifs. As a stickler for detail, I must confess that some of the above images are actually nineteenth century, such as the demon Baphomet (the goat headed one with one arm up and one arm down). Although these are cool I decided to target my style to the older wood block type (these later ones are probably copper plate) as the nineteenth century artist probably crafted the images more out of a sense of exotic and less out of true belief like the earlier more hysterical age that was prone to burning at the stake.

Unless you’re lucky enough to work with an artist who is willing to immerse themselves in your book and related materials, it’s essential to provide a clear direction, usually illustrated with a group images hinting at the style you want. Without reading your book and knowing as much as you do (fat chance) it’s unlikely that they are going to spontaneously generate a style that is consistent with the feel of your work. In future posts, I’ll show the examples I used to art direct my specific character images, and the results these produced.

And this incredible donuts from a special place that fries them to order. They only make donuts and for an hour a day — fried chicken! These are three different variants of cinnamon. Certainly the best cinnamon donuts I’ve ever had.

Given that we went out to the Zoo all day while my cousin Abbe cooked up this followup to the official Thanksgiving dinner, she insists that it should really be called the ThanksFlitter (her last name). Regardless, the gluttony continued.

The 2006 il Cocco. This guy makes only 3000 bottles a year, and he does ALL the labor (field and cellar) himself.

Parker 93. “The 2006 Brunello di Montalcino is a beguiling wine laced with all sorts of black cherries, minerals, spices, licorice and menthol. All of the aromas and flavors are layered together through to the exquisite, refined finish. The 2006 shows a level of richness and density this bottling has lacked in some previous vintages. Today the tannins remain a touch austere, but another few years in bottle should do the trick. Anticipated maturity: 2014-2026.”

Parker 94. “The 2007 Laurel, a blend of 65% Garnacha and 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, is deep purple-colored with a bouquet of wet stone, Asian spices, black cherry compote, and incense. Dense and sweet on the palate with tons of spice, it is super-concentrated, rich, and smooth-textured. Give this lengthy effort 2-3 years of additional cellaring and drink it from 2013 to 2027.”

This is an amazing wine, deep grape.

Parker 91. “The 2005 Finca Libertad is a blend of 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Cabernet Franc, and 30% Merlot aged for 18 months in new French oak. The Cabernet Franc portion of the blend was sourced from 100+-year-old pre-phyloxera vines. Dark ruby in color, it exhibits a complex aromatic array of toasty oak, cinnamon, earth notes, pencil lead, cassis, and black currant. This is followed by a medium-bodied, elegant wine with savory flavors, considerable complexity, and enough structure to evolve for another 2-3 years. This lengthy effort should be at its best from 2011 to 2020.”

Every year my mom and her sister cook up an incredible feast for the family. And every year, incredibly, the food gets slightly better.

We open with the real Chardonnay from my cellars (hauled 3000 miles): “The Domaine Fevre 2006 Chablis (there is a separate cuvee from purchased fruit which I did not taste) displays an uncanny combination of creaminess of texture with firm underlying suggestions of chalk and stone. Mouthwatering honeydew melon and lime run with the mineral suggestions right through to a long luscious back end of exceptional quality for generic Chablis.”

Then back it up with a red burg, cousin to last nights. Parker 93. “Super-ripe aromas of cookie dough, spices, and black cherry syrup can be found in the nose of the medium-bodied 2002 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Pruliers. Its fabulously satiny texture, concentration, and purity are immensely impressive. This medium-bodied wine coats the palate with innumerable black fruits, minerals, and spices. Projected maturity: 2008-2018.”

My mom in the kitchen, hard at work on the turkey.

her cohort and sister, also at work.

Turkey and stuffing.

The appetizer spread. Various breads and crackers (mostly picked over).

Caponata.

bean salad.

Guacamole. I didn’t make it, so it isn’t incredibly spicy. Sometime I’ll have to do a post on mine.

A decent chianti clasico. Parker 90. We had two fabulous meals right in this town in Chianti. “The 2007 Chianti Classico is a pretty red laced with dark cherries, dried flowers and spices. The perfumed bouquet melds seamlessly into a caressing, attractive mid-palate that turns delicate on the finish. The Chianti Classico is 95% Sangioveto and 5% Canaiolo. Anticipated maturity: 2010-2014.”

The main spread.

Bread from a great Philly bakery.

Two types of cranberry, this one is more a jam, with a bit of spicy kick.

And a cranberry relish.

Salad (dessing in the background).

Nuts, separated out for the allergic.
Marinated carrots, sort of Moroccan style.

Brussel sprouts. Don’t knock the veggie until you’ve tasted these.

Roasted beets. Yummy — and pink pee.

Butternut squash puree.

The turkey. We BBQ the big fellows on the charcoal grill.

Stuffing.

Gravy.

A total blockbuster. Parker 96. “The top effort, the 2007 Cotes du Rhone-Villages Rasteau Fleur de Confiance, is awesome. An inky/blue/black color is followed by a stunning bouquet of scorched earth, incense, blackberry jam, coffee, and spice. This full-bodied, massive, stacked and packed Rasteau is destined for two decades of life. Its sweet tannin and textured mouthfeel are compelling. Give it 2-4 years of cellaring and consume it over the following 20 years.”

This year’s plate.

And what little I left of it.

After dinner we move onto this incredibly grapey wine. Parker 01. “The 2007 Shiraz Angel’s Share reveals a Cote-Rotie-like nose with its scents of mineral, meat, game and bacon. On the palate there is plenty of sweet, spicy blueberry fruit, silky tannin, and incipient complexity. Give it 1-2 years of additional cellaring and drink it from 2010 to 2017.”

Me, after more than a little wine and food.
This rare cream sherry was opened to go with dessert.

And for dessert, homemade (like everything else) plum tart.

And pecan pie!

And my grandmother’s special brownies.

Plus Haagen daas vanilla to wash it down with.

This was another spectacular homemade ThanksGavin dinner as usual. It was arguably even better than ever before.

And with a blast the ThanksGavin 2011 is off. Canonically, in a tradition developed over the last twenty years, the gavin Thanksgiving weekend is defined by four major meals. The Wednesday night dinner (out somewhere, usually in downtown Philly), the main event on Thursday, the Friday night dinner at my cousin Abbe’s, and the Saturday deli brunch. For this year’s kickoff a downtown intimate French restaurant was chosen.

NOTE: Technically, this is the ThanksGavin/Flitter as my grandparents had two daughters and so they have different married names. But for simplicity I’ll usually just say ThanksGavin.

A light sancerre to begin. Like many Philly restaurants Bibou doesn’t have a liquor license — perfect pour moi — as I can bring without corkage!

Every year I drag out at least a case of wine from my cellar. My favorite opener varietal, real Pinot Noir. the Parker 93. “An assortment of candied cherries explode from the glass of the 2002 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Perrieres. This seductive wine’s character is drenched in black cherry syrup, rocks, and earth. Medium-bodied, it has outstanding depth, concentration, and a long, expressive finish that reveals copious quantities of ripe tannin. Anticipated maturity: 2008-2018.”

The menu.

Very nice bread and butter from France.
An uncooked preview of the bone marrow special.

A blockbuster Spanish wine. Parker 94. “The 2007 Valdemuz is 100% Prieto Picudo from vines ranging in age from 100-115 years. For this cuvee 20% whole bunches were utilized with aging for 18 months in new French oak. A glass-coating opaque purple color, it offers up a splendid aromatic array of pain grille, graphite, espresso, truffle, black cherry, and blackberry. Dense, ripe, and concentrated, on the palate it is velvety textured and virtually seamless. This lengthy offering will evolve for another 5-7 years and provide big-time pleasure through 2027 if not longer.”

“Foie gras Duo. Foie gras crème brulée & Seared foie gras with caramelized Seckel pear flavored with lavender.” The left hand side was a fairly traditional prep for foie — but excellent with great texture and a nice meaty / slightly spiced flavor to the fruit. The right had good texture, and was nice, but was more like a custard.

“Soupe de céleri. Celeriac soup, chestnut purée, poached celeriac in Earl Grey tea.” One of those really good lots of creme with a hint of vegetable soups.

Parker gives this a 92, but I’d put it more like at 95-96. “The 1995 Hermitage La Sizeranne is performing even better out of bottle than it did immediately prior to bottling. It is a full-bodied, dense ruby/purple-colored wine with a sweet, smoky, chocolate, cassis, and tar-scented nose, great fruit intensity, full body, a layered texture, sweet tannin, and good grip. It should be cellared for a minimum of 4-5 years, and will keep for 15-20.”

A blockbuster argentine wine. As good as I’ve had from there. Parker 94. “Flechas de Los Andes’ 2006 Gran Corte spent 17 months in new French oak. It is opaque purple-colored with legs that ooze down the glass. The aromatics are brooding but expressive with notes of pain grille, pencil lead, spice box, lavender, black cherry, and plum. Opulent, with glossy fruit, this dense, rich effort conceals significant underlying structure. This intense, powerful, lengthy wine demands a minimum of 5-7 years of cellaring and will be at its best from 2015 to 2030.”

The dessert menu.

Classic “Creme brûlée, flavored with vanilla and tobacco leaves.”

French press coffee.

“Mimi’s chocolate cake, caramel sauce.”

“Floating Island with homemade praline and goat milk creme anglais.” This was probably the best Floating Island I’ve ever had. The texture was lighter than air with a very nice nutty flavor.

“Fresh quince pie.” A bit of figs on the side.

“Berry ice cream.”

And to finish, some macaroons and meringues. Both very good.

This was a very good meal. Classically French, yet with a slightly updated palette and a deft touch. If you are in Philadelphia I highly recommend.

I’m happy to announce that Jak & Daxter will make its PS3 debut this February with the launch of the Jak and Daxter Collection. This is an awesome way for a new generation of gamers to experience (or re-experience) three of Naughty Dog‘s PS2 masterpieces.

The Jak and Daxter Collection features three classic Jak and Daxter titles – Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, and Jak 3 – all three of which I lead programmed and co-directed, were written in my awesome GOAL programming language, and totally kicked ass. They were remastered by Mass Media, working closely with the team at Naughty Dog. With the launch of Jak and Daxter Collection, you’ll be able to experience the adventures of Jak and his Daxter in 720p high definition with crisper visuals, smoother gameplay animation, and in full stereoscopic 3D. And, I’m sure all of you hardcore collectors will be happy to hear that each game in the trilogy features full PS3 trophy support!

The Jak and Daxter franchise set a benchmark for the platformer genre with its amazing storytelling, huge environments, no loading, and gaming freedom. In fact, it holds seven world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008 including the First Seamless 3D World in a Console Game. If you can believe it, the Jak and Daxter franchise will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year on December 4th! An amazing amount of effort and talent from the entire Naughty Dog team, went into these babies over six long years, and they can all be yours on one little blu-ray!

[ NOTE: the content of this post is partially — ahem, largely — purloined from the Playstation blog. ]

While the first season of this show was great, the second is even better! Spoiler warning. It starts off with a bang resolving the “Tucco situation” and then keeps rolling from there. The pre-titles scene for each episode employs the effective (when done well) TV device of cryptic flash forwards to the season’s last episode, leaving us with the “uh, oh, what’s coming?” and “how the hell are we going to get to that” feeling. Breaking Bad keeps this lean and creepy, without a ton of information. It doesn’t do the kind of sophisticated and deliberately misleading layering that say, Damages (another excellent show) uses.

Even in the middle of the season there are some intense moments, like when Walt and Jesse are stuck in the desert, or Jesse’s attempt to recover some stollen cash from two junkies, and even brother-in-law Hank’s explosive trip to Mexico. All the character’s are really solid. I’m particularly impressed by Jesse. His addictions and weaknesses feel very real, but he has some real good qualities that while not in full control, round the character out to make him very sympathetic.

The last third of the season is really really strong. We delve deeply into Jesse’s personal problems and to say things aren’t going well is an understatement. These all manage to wind themselves into the larger scale cataclysm of the finale. And while this leaves us with a slight taste of Deus ex machina, it really breaks up powerfully at the end. Very strong closer. People tell me seasons 3 and 4 are even better too!

Sfixio is a brand new Italian in downtown Beverly Hills with a modern Tuscan slant. It’s owned and by a husband and wife pair: Chef Massimo Denaro in the kitchen and his wife managing the front.

The location has received a chic modern update too (it used to be Da Vinci for the last 30 years).

The brushed aluminum bar.

I brought this wine from the vineyard in Tuscany. Parker 93. “The 2006 Brunello di Montalcino is a beguiling wine laced with all sorts of black cherries, minerals, spices, licorice and menthol. All of the aromas and flavors are layered together through to the exquisite, refined finish. The 2006 shows a level of richness and density this bottling has lacked in some previous vintages. Today the tannins remain a touch austere, but another few years in bottle should do the trick. Anticipated maturity: 2014-2026.”

“Pappardelle al Cinghiale (Homemade Pappardelle pasta with Braised wild boar in Chianti wine flavored with Juniper berries).” I had this dish all over Tuscany this year. This one was good, probably in the top 75% of those I had. Not as great as this one say, but very good.

An osso buco special on mashed potatoes. Certainly an excellent meaty rendition of this dish. The meat was not only tender, but very flavorful.

The dessert menu.

“Tortino al cioccolato con Fragoline (Chocolate cake with strawberries).” Very very “dark” and chocolaty. A little too dark and dense for my taste, I prefer creamier and sweeter, but it was certainly well done.

Overall, Sfixio was very good. LA is full of Italian restaurants, and there wasn’t anything radical here, but this is certainly a chef operating at a high level, with a good palette, excellent ingredients, and really solid execution. So I recommend, and we’ll go again.

Eclipse is clearly the lame duck of the three pre-Breaking-Dawn Twilight films. It’s so cheesy that it makes the original and New Moon seem high art. First of all, the A-story is about as weighty as a sesame seed. We’ve got this entirely lame plot where ginger-haired hipster Victoria is still after Bella because of the ridiculous happenings of the first film. In order to thwart the plot crushing clairvoyance of Alice she has to act indirectly, raising an army of “Newborn” vampires to come after Bella and the Cullens. In this featherweight version of the vampire legend, new vampires are not just crazy (that’s fairly typical) but are extra strong. Well, at least we are told this. What we are shown (in the “final battle”) is that the Newborns die easily without causing the good guys to even break a sweat — only a few ribs. I find this incredibly lame. In my fictional universe, vampires grow in strength with the years, but at the same time very old vampires are extremely rare — and extraordinarily twisted, powerful, and dead. Did I mention they only come out at night and like to decorate their enemy’s houses with body parts?

But none of Eclipse‘s A-story really matters. It’s the B-story (romance) that holds the focus. This episode is all (I mean all) about the love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob. Which is about as cheesy as Fourme d’Ambert, but again does have a certain charm, and more than a little humor. The “plot” forces ever more competition between our studs, leading to post-modern lines like “I’m Switzerland” or “does he own a shirt?” This trend climaxes (or doesn’t) in the amusing talkfest inside the tent at the end of the movie. Jacob has been hanging outside (shirtless of course) in a blizzard, but he ducks in to check on freezing Bella. Poor Edward just isn’t much help — no heartbeat = no bodyheat. “You’ll warm up faster if you take off your clothes,” Jacob advises when he crawls in the sleeping bag, right in front of his rival.

I must also mention that every time the A-story cuts in my skin crawls. The flashback with the Native Americans and the “cold ones” (vampires) was particularly seizure inducing. The little flash overs to Victoria and the Volturi “plotting” are perfunctory and really make no sense given the essentially first-person nature of the narrative. The plot (cough cough) is really driven (and hampered) by Alice’s corny power. This happens in the entire series. Since she can see the future, most decisions consist of her instantly knowing someone is going to show up or something is going to happen. Then they hop to it. Occasionally, like in New Moon, this screws something up briefly. Truth is, this is an amazingly lazy device on the part of Stephanie Meyer. It’s like a continuous deus ex machina. It even traps the author in Eclipse so she has to invent a whole reason Victoria can sneak up on them via her leaving it as a “last minute decision.” This is totally bogus. If she decided to leave it to the end to decide, she’s decided and Alice would know. BS alert!

But I’m not done. Continuing my theory that the series is teenage girl wish fulfillment we have this big B-story thread where Edward wants to get married but Bella resists. I’m pretty sure this is just to create further reason for him to actually do what she (and by proxy her teen audience) wants him to do: propose. Then there is his insistence on celibacy. But others have certainly gone into the whole vampire = the dangers of sex or whatever is going on here.

I’m not sure if I loathe the movie or actually enjoyed it as an odd sociological study (owing to it being so popular) or liked it because Kristen Stewart is hot. It was definitely not because of Edward’s eyebrows or Jacob’s six-pack.

In honor of the upcoming return of everyone’s favorite sparkly vampires, I rewatched the earlier offerings. Oh, where to begin. The cheese is so thick in this series that it might as well be set in a Paris fromagerie. But it does have a certain charm. Hands down the best part of the whole series is Kristen Stewart. I have to admit, I do kind of like her. Here she’s severely hampered by the script, but she still makes the best of it. In better movies, like the brilliant Adventureland, she shines (and I’m not talking the CGI sparkle kind of shine).

One really funny bit is how close the real film is to the trailer for the parody movie, Vampires Suck:

Now, Vampires Suck, really sucks. It’s almost unwatchable and all the good parts are in the trailer. But it does point out some of the hilarious cheese in the real films, particularly New Moon. The original story is structured pretty much entirely around the Bella, Edward, Jacob triangle. There is a certain decency to this core. It’s not mature adult writing, but a sort of codified teen girl fantasy. Bella, the weak normal girl, shy and insecure, is pursued by not one but two hunk hotties. The aloof cool type AND the hot and emotional no-shirt-wearing type. Fermented milkish as this is, it knows its audience. Where the movie totally fails is in paying any decent respect to the traditions of Fantasy and Horror. The dreadlock swirling, furry vested members of the Black Eyed Peas (I mean bad vampires), the zero research Matrix dressed Volturi (although their leader plays the role with a delicious camp), and the sparkles. Although they didn’t film in Volterra, they should have, cool city. But the franchise’s mythological characters, despite their continued insistence on the challenges of their existence, have it easy. Really these vampires and werwolves are just wish fulfillment, stripped of the double edged nature of the original legends that spawned them.

See, those older tales, like most folk stories are cautionary in nature. The focus on the karmic cost of power and pride. In the end, it always brings down the monsters. Twilight isn’t about that. It pretends to be. But this is a giant “tell” where the characters and the story pretend to “tell” us that these powers have costs. It goes to great lengths to pretend so. But in the end it’s just complex machinations to support the central triangle of wish fulfillment.

New Moon is considerably better than Eclipse, but both suffer badly from essentially being diversions. Stephanie Meyer apparently originally plotted the story as two books (what became Twlight and Breaking Dawn). When the first did well she inserted two extra installments in the middle. I can’t fault her that decision, made her tens of millions for sure.

This time of year we have a lot of birthday parties to go to (my son is three). Due to rain (drizzle) one got moved to this western (Texas) style BBQ joint! Boy, is that a lot better than luke-warm delivery pizza!
The unassuming Palms frontage, literally across the street from the amazing N/Naka.

The menu.

Lemonade (sweet but real, not packaged) came in jars! Moonshine style!

I’ve been waiting for Maison Giraud, the new local (just blocks away!) Pacific Palisades restaurant bakery from acclaimed LA French chef Alain Giraud to open for what seems like forever. Finally, the day has happened. Today is the first time they are serving at all, bakery and breakfast. By next monday they plan to be open from breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The Swathmore Ave frontage has been revealing itself in stages since at least the 4th of July.

The menu is out front. We didn’t have time to actually sit down. You can find the full menu on the website. Soon…

Clean inside. We proceeded straight to the bakery counter to find that it had already been picked fairly clean :-).

These gorgeous (I only had my iPhone for photos, sorry) pane raison.

On the left a single chocolate croissant and on the right a croissant batter thing with tiny blueberries and bakeries custard. We tried both of these. Stellar! Much better I thought than Bouchon Bakery. The pastry had that crunch/chewy mouth feel that is intensely Parisian, but very rare in the states. Must be the butter from Normandy!

We’ll be back as soon as we can (perhaps not until after the holidays) to try it out for dinner. The menu, at a glance, looked a lot like Annisette’s minus the raw bar. There was a lot of good stuff though. I didn’t see a Croque Madame though. I may have to ask for it special.

Continuing the big upgrades on my website, I’ve built out new pages for my books: The Darkening Dream and Untimed. And I’m in the process of working on a generic “Andy Gavin: Author” landing page too which I should have done in a couple hours. These pages are an attempt to look less bloggy, more like typical author and book sites. I’ll, of course, be continuing to refine and add. One of the nice things about using WordPress is that it’s easy to continually modify. I’ll add reviews and promotional information. Sample chapters, etc. When I get my professional cover art for The Darkening Dream I’ll have to reskin those pages.

Please let me know (via comments) what you think about the new pages. Or any suggestions you might have. Comments are turned off on the book pages themselves, but you can use this one here.

At a technical level, these new templates show off some of the power of the builder platform premium theme I’m using. It has cool layout tools that make it easier to create different layouts in WordPress and then assign them to different pages. Each of these layouts can reference or use separately constructed menus and widgets as well. That way, for example, I have a different more bookish menu on those pages, but it’s shared by a number of layouts. I’ve also been using a quick redirects plugin to create virtual slugs that I can use to build out URL hooks that are independent of the pages themselves. And one of yesterday’s projects was getting that animated jQuery “featured post” slider going. Builder had one that formed the core, but like many WordPress plugins it was setup for a single instance with just one category. I hacked the code to add parameters to the shortcode enabling me to feature different feeds on different pages. Took all of 15 minutes (mad coding skills — and I don’t even really know PHP). One wonders why the authors didn’t build it that way to begin with. I’ve noticed that PHP code is often extremely “non-functional” with an over reliance on global variables. I don’t mean the program doesn’t work, but that it doesn’t adhere to proper functional programming style to allow easy and modular reuse of code.

The trailer actually looks pretty good. A hair cheesy, but not all Twilighted out or anything. For those of you who haven’t read it, the book (at least the first of the three) is pretty darn excellent. The second two devolve into pseudo-political nonsense reminiscent of the Zion scenes in the later Matrix movies. But the first is a fantastic and intense read.

I’ve officially signed a cover artist for The Darkening Dream. His name is Cliff Nielsen and he’s a very experienced artist using a cool ethereal multimedia style. You can check out his work on his website but I pasted two into this post. I originally found him though this image of the dude with the watch. I was searching the web for “clockwork men” since the villains in my second novel, Untimed, are… you guessed it… clockwork men. Google brought up this image and I had to find out who the artist was. Then I discovered I already owned a decent collection of books he drew the covers for (e.g. City of Bones, which I reviewed recently).

My homebrew TDD cover

A lot of covers these days are just simple photos (like my homebrew tree cover below) or stenciled vector art. But I’ve always been partial to “painted” covers, so in researching cover design options I kept coming back to commissioning an original illustration. Perhaps it’s because of my early years as a 70s and 80s Science Fiction and Fantasy reader, where nearly every cover was painted. Back then, photographic covers were always a sign of some cheesy film tie-in.

In any case, Cliff’s art resonated well with my own style. Although it must be noted that the above clockwork man is far too 19th century for the mysterious “Tick-Tocks” in my second book (who blend their outfits into whatever era they visit), but it’s still a great image and very evocative.

Another Cliff cover: The Thief and the Beanstalk

_

So Cliff is reading/skimming the book and I hope to have some content sketches back shortly. I can’t wait. One of the best things about working with artists (and I was fortunate to have worked with dozens of great ones at Naughty Dog and my other companies) is seeing your ideas realized in a visual form.

I added a gallery to the site and populated it with some of the standard images I had on hand for my games and books. At the moment this is mostly my draft book covers and tons of Crash Bandicoot photos (I collected them for my big series at the beginning of the year). Truth be told, the hardest thing was choosing a gallery plugin and getting the CSS configured properly. I spent about 90 minutes tracking down why my images we running off to the side in an infinite row. It turned out my theme has “white-space: nowrap;” turned on be default in the CSS. There are a lot of CSS parameters.